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Octavia Butler

Octavia Estelle Butler is "the first African-American woman
to gain popularity and critical acclaim as a major science fiction
writer" (Hine 208). She was born on June 22, 1947 in Pasadena,
California, to Laurice and Octavia M. (Guy) Butler. Butler was
the only child of five pregnancies that her mother was able to
carry to term. Her father, a shoeshine man, died when Butler was
very young. Most of her memories are actually stories that she
heard from her mother and grandmother. Her mother and she lived
in a very racially mixed neighborhood. The unifying factor was
the struggle to make ends meet. Butler "never personally
experienced the more rigid forms of a segregated society"
(Smith 144). Butler was very shy in school, and describes herself
as a daydreamer. These factors made it very difficult to succeed
in school. She overcame dyslexia, and "began writing when
[she] was 10 years old...to escape loneliness and boredom."
(Locher 104). At age twelve she became interested in science fiction.

Butler received an Associate of Arts degree in 1968 from Pasadena
City College. She then attended California State University, Los
Angeles and the University of California, Los Angeles. She credits
her success to nonacademic programs, though. Two of these programs
are the Open Door Program of the Screen Writers Guild of America
and the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop. While attending
school Butler held down a lot of odd jobs. Her work experiences
come through in the character of Dana in her novel Kindred
(as quoted above). Butler also spends time researching developments
in biology, the physical sciences, and genetics.

Butler has won several awards for her writing. In 1984 she won
a Hugo Award for her short story, "Speech Sounds." In
1985 she won the Hugo for her novella "Bloodchild."
"Bloodchild" also won the 1984 Nebula Award. The Hugo
and Nebula Awards are considered science fiction's highest awards.
They are decided on by other science fiction writers and fans.
In 1995, Butler won the MacArthur Foundation "genius grant"
which pays $295,000 over 5 years.

Butler's patternists series, published between 1976 and 1984,
tells of a society that is run by a specially-bred group of telepaths.
This is an elite group who are mentally linked to one another
in a hierarchical pattern. These telepaths are trying to create
a superhuman race. This series includes the books: Patternmaster,
Mind of My Mind, Survivor, Wild Seed, and Clay's
Ark. Patternmaster deals with the struggle
between brawn and brain. It also comments on class structure and
the role of women. Wild Seed "incorporates
a great deal of the Black experience, including slavery"
(Hine 209). Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago
are the three novels that make up the Xenogenesis trilogy. These
stories are about the near destruction of humankind through nuclear
war and gene-swapping by extraterrestrials. The extraterrestials
observe the humans as being hierarchical, which cause them to
be prejudiced, and to have class divisions and conflict. These
characteristics make it inevitable that mankind will eventually
destroy itself without the aliens' help.

Octavia Butler has been well received by the critics. Burton
Raffel had this to say about Butler's work: "initially drawn
on by the utterly unexpected power and subtly complex intelligence
of her extraordinary trilogy Xenogenesis, but sustained and even
compelled by the rich dramatic textures, the profound psychological
insights" (454) "Butler's work is both fascinating and
highly unusual" Rosemary Stevenson writes; "character
development, human relationships, and social concerns predominate
over intergalactic hardware" (208).

"I'm not writing for some noble purpose, I just like telling
a good story. If what I write about helps others understand this
world we live in, so much the better for all of us," Octavia
Butler told Robert McTyre. "Every story I write adds to me
a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude
or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand
people and grow...Every story I create, creates me. I write to
create myself" (Stevenson 210).

Friday May 28, 1999
OCTAVIA BUTLER, world renowned African-American science fiction
novelist, is among those to be honored by the Pasadena Arts Council
at the 35th annual Gold Crown Awards Banquet tonight in Pasadena.
Pasadena
Star-News

KINDRED

I was working out of a casual labor agency--we regulars called it a slave market. You sat and sat until the dispatcher sent you out on a job or sent you home. Home meant no money. Getting sent out meant minimum wage--minus Uncle Sam's share--for as many hours as you were needed. You swept floors, stuffed envelopes, took inventory, washed dishes, sorted potato chips (really!), cleaned toilets, marked prices on merchandise...you did whatever you were sent out to do. It was nearly always mindless work, and as far as most employers were concerned, it was done by mindless people. Nonpeople rented for a few hours, a few days, a few weeks. I did the work, I went home, I ate, and then I slept for a few hours. Finally, I got up and wrote.

The combined mind-force of a telepathic race, Patternist thoughts can destroy, heal, rule. For the strongest mind commands the entire Pattern and all within it. Now the son of the Patternmaster craves this ultimate power. He has murdered or enslaved every threat to his ambition -- except one. In the wild, mutant-infested hills, a young apprentice must be hunted down and destroyed because he is the tyrant's equal...and the Patternmaster's other son.

Mind of My Mind (1977)

For four thousand years, an Immortal has spread the seeds of an evolutionary master race, using the downtrodden of the underclass as his private breeding stock. But now a young ghetto telepath has found the way to awaken -- and rule -- her superhuman kind, igniting a psychic battle from L.A. mansions to South Central slums, as she challengest her creator for the right to free her people...And enslave the

Wild Seed (1980)

He could not die.

Doro was a mind force who
changed bodies like clothes, killing his hosts by reflex
-- or design. He roamed Earth, gathering the genetic Wild
Seed: the tormented, mad thought-readers, seers, and witches.
Some he helped. Some he destroyed. But Doro bred, ruled,
owned them all. He feared no one -- until he met Anyanwu.

She could not be killed.

Anyanwu was an old woman, a young woman, a man, a leopard,
an eagle, a dolphin -- a shapeshifter. She could absorb
bullets and make medicine with a kiss. She gave birth
to tribes, she nurtured and healed -- but Anyanwu would
savage any who threatened those she loved. She feared
no one -- until she met Doro.

Together they were locked in a war of wills. From the
African jungles to the colonies of America, Doro and Anyanwu
were the father, mother, and gods of an awesome, unborn
race. And their love and hate wove a Pattern of destiny
that not even immortals could imagine....

Clay's Ark (1984)

Clay's Ark is a dark acoptolytic vision of the not so
very distant future. Poverty everywhere, rampaging car gangs
kidnapping for profit, and a huge schism between the rich
and everyone else. It is this world in which live Blake
Maslin and his teenaged daughters, Kiera and Rane. While
returning to their enclave, they are abducted by two men
and driven to a remote ranch. Once there, they learn that
they have not been abducted to be held for ransom, but to
serve as hosts for an alien microorganism brought back from
another planet by one of the abductors.

They discover Earth has been invaded by an alien microorganism.
The deadly entity attacks like a virus, but survivors
of the disease genetically bond with it, developing amazing
powers, near- immortality, unnatural desires-and a need
to spread the contagion and create a secret colony of
the transformed. Now the meaning of "survival"
changes. For the babies born in the colony are clearly,
undeniably, not human...

Dawn: Xenogenesis (1987)

Dawn introduces the reader
to a fascinating alien race that intends to save a post-nuclear
holocaust earth by re-populating it with half-human, half-alien
beings. The concept of cross-breeding through genetic
engineering with an alien race to create a new species
is a truly innovative storyline. The Oankali intend to
take a number of humans they saved from a nucleated earth,
cross-breed with them, and re-introduce them and their
alien offspring to the earth. The highly negative reactions
of the humans to this idea is very realistic and their
interactions with the aliens are conceivable. The main
character, Lilith Iyapo, is a strong willed African-American
woman who learns to accept the aliens for what they are
but never fully comes to accept their plans for the human
race.

The Oankali are an imaginative race with three genders,
the third being a necessary intermediary between the male
and female Oankali during intercourse and for procreation.
Therefore it is not surprising that the "third"
gender (it is not really neuter) is the dominant gender
of the race. They travel in an interstellar ship that
is entirely made of living tissue and the Oankali physically
interact with the ship to produce food, dispose of waste,
and reproduce other needs. The Oankali travel about the
universe and cross-breed with other sapient beings out
of necessity. Humans are just another of their "victims"
or "beneficiaries", depending on one's point
of view. The new species is ostensibly better than its
parent species.

Many of the so-called open questions in Dawn are
filled during the remainder of the trilogy.